


if you're lost, you can look and you will find me

by jolt



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Conspicuous references to 80s songs, Fluff, M/M, Magic Realism, The music is a character on its own basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 12:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14402613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolt/pseuds/jolt
Summary: On Thursday, Mat nearly takes a puck to the head because Phil Collins is quite possibly trying to use his body as a vessel for Take Me Home to project itself throughout MSG. Tito nudges his shoulder back on the bench just as the song cycles into its huge chorus, and Mat can barely focus on anything besides the points where their sides are pressed together, touching.(Or, the music is trying to tell Mat something. He just has to slow down long enough to listen.)





	if you're lost, you can look and you will find me

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS COMPLETELY FICTIONAL AND TO BE TAKEN EXTREMELY LIGHTLY.
> 
> I'm FINALLY posting this, after painstakingly writing and rewriting sections of plot because I could decide if I wanted this to be angst-ridden or fluffy as all hell. I chose the latter. This is the product of listening to too many 80s love songs (if one even _can_ do such a thing) and of wanting to write this pairing for so long (which I blame Lotts for). Also, I laid the nostalgia and grand gestures and cheesiness on THICK with this one. As if I could possibly do anything else.

 

Mat’s always heard the music. It’s always been there.

 

***

 

As a kid, everything is so loud. It’s noisy at school, at the arena, even at home. For years, there’s just a constant commotion. Whistles and shouting coaches and pucks against the pipes and shouting parents in the stands and skates being sharpened and —

An endless amount of noise. Mat barely hears the music, because there’s just so much  _ noise _ . 

Mat’s  _ head _ is so full of noise, too, so it’s difficult to filter the music out and distinguish it from all the other crap in his mind. A hundred separate pressures that he’s put on himself for as long as he can remember. Play hockey. Skate faster. Eat six eggs a day and try not to puke from protein shakes. Keep up with schoolwork. Call mom every other night. Workout twice a day. Make the NHL. Mat doesn’t half-ass things as a rule. He doesn’t have time to listen to the music.

Somewhere along the line, though, Mat reached a moment of clarity. His goals weren’t pipe dreams, anymore, and he was on the path most likely to land him a spot on a professional hockey team. As a result, things slowed down. Not time, or his schedule, or anything like that. But the noise. It slowed to almost a crawling pace. Slow enough that Mat could feel the music following him around, could feel it surround him in ways he never could when he was younger. The noise halted long enough that Mat was able to actually  _ listen _ to the music for the first time in his life. And he loved it. Mat let go of beating himself up in favour of listening to the music. The music became his friend, in a weird way, and he refocused, realigning himself around the music. It turned out to not be such a bad thing, after all. The music actually helped, complemented his life, and as much as it was still the weird little secret between him and the universe, Mat stopped pretending not to hear it.

 

***

 

The problem is, lately, it’s been getting to be too much. 

Cymbals and electric guitar and French horns in no particular order or combination, loud and banging at the gates of Mat’s psyche, and it’s been grating on his nerves.

 

***

 

The music works like this:

(And Mat doesn’t have a scientific breakdown, exactly, but in his experience —

The music knows how he’s feeling, at any given time. Even when Mat doesn’t want to admit what he’s feeling to himself. Almost especially then. It’s like having a Spotify playlist in his mind and his veins and his whole being. It’s like if that Spotify playlist was also a mood ring.

He thinks of it a little bit like those mice in  _ Cinderella _ , the ones who follow her around and make her a dress, and even though they’re teeny, they accomplish this pretty big thing. And, okay, Cinderella ends up needing more magic to make the dress really beautiful and come to life, but the mice still helped. Still gave her that push.

Mat wouldn’t say it gives him any kind of unfair advantage, though. He and the music are a team. If anything, it’s another distraction Mat has had to hone and learn to overcome, to work and produce in spite of. On the best of days, the music clears his head. It’s reliable in the sense that it’s always there, whether or not it chooses to pronounce itself.

Mat never pays it too much thought, anyway. There’s more important stuff to focus on, especially when he’s younger and can barely keep track of it all on his own.

Like he said, he’s hardly got a scientific explanation for how it works. But it’s been this way for a while, and he’s never had a problem until recently.

 

***

 

It started towards the beginning of the season. Go figure. Mat’s finally playing NHL hockey, and that’s when the music starts malfunctioning.

The first time it happens is at a home game, when he’s warming up. Feeling like he’s on the precipice of something massive, of conquering the world and he wants all of Long Island — hell, the whole goddamn state of New York — to know it. He’s amped as  _ hell _ , to the point where he can barely distinguish between the electric guitars blaring over the speakers and the ones howling in his blood stream. 

As a kid, Mat was so focused on how awesome it would feel to finally make it to this point, he barely considered how doubly awesome it would feel to be here with his best friend. And that, just that thought, is enough to make Mat slow in his warmup, to stop running drills and savour the moment, the crowd’s energy, and search for Tito. When he finally identifies 72, bright orange against cobalt blue, he feels something, some vague sensation in the pit of his stomach. 

Before he can dwell too much on the source of the strange ache in his stomach, the music shifts to something soft and melodic. The tinkling sound of an abstract piano. The kind of music the trainers recommend they meditate to. And that’s —

definitely weird.

At first, he swears it’s just Barclays fucking with him. Accidentally playing the gentlest, most serene music during warmups instead of, like, Papa Roach or Cardi B. But it’s unmistakably piano music, and it’s sweet and lingering. Or, it is, until Tito whips his way around several of their teammates and stops right in front of Mat, with the biggest grin his dumb face his capable of. The music immediately shifts into something more urgent. Mat has the sudden mental image of Beethoven frantically hunched over a piano.

Mat’s a little freaked, but the feeling disappears, replaced by an easiness that being around Tito usually coaxes out of him. He guesses, if anything, the universe is pretty psyched for Mat too. It’s probably just trying to help him slow down and really appreciate the moment. All the vets keep telling him rookie season flies by, and you only get one shot at it.

“I still can’t believe this,” Mat says.

Tito nods. “Me neither.”

It’s not a big deal, all in all, and the music reverts to the intense, blood-pumping motivation it usually becomes at game-time, so Mat doesn’t worry too much. The piano stuff from before was likely a glitch, a confused product of Mat’s sudden sentimentality.

 

***

 

The gentle piano music doesn’t last long, anyway.

 

***

 

The music starts overtaking him at moments it  _ shouldn’t _ . It starts becoming more than just subtle background noise, more than just a metronome. The damn thing skips across his muscles, lands in his joints, swims through his veins, constantly tugging, like it’s not satisfied. In turn, Mat can never just be satisfied in the moment.

Mat always figured the music only felt this way for important occasions. Getting amped up over hockey, the feeling of victory like a roaring in his chest, representing Canada in the World Juniors, getting drafted. All arguably giant moments in Mat’s life, bookending the quieter ones.

The music doesn’t stick around, usually. That’s what Mat’s trying to say. 

 

***

 

The thing is — Mat doesn’t have a crush on Tito, but Mat doesn’t  _ not _ have a crush on him, either.

It’s maybe the blurriness of that line that lends itself really well to kind of moping around his apartment, scrolling through Tito’s insta, not knowing what to do with himself. And maybe that’s the mood that the music senses and, in turn, adopts. He barely recognizes or understands these feelings as something beyond the common, confusing ingredients of history and proximity, but he’s been handling it. Trying to, at least. He was doing okay before the music decided to fly off the rails. The music is supposed to be a constant, not to freak out all of a sudden because — what? Mat’s finally attained his goal of playing in the NHL? It doesn’t seem fair for  _ now _ to be the time for the music to lose its proverbial shit. Especially since now is when Mat’s career is getting interesting —

“You’re never gonna guess it,” Tito says, bratty, with a grin that takes over his whole face.

“Shut up, yes I will,” Mat insists. Not  _ not _ crushing on his best friend isn’t enough to make Mat ever avoid him, as much as it can weigh on him sometimes. 

“You  _ can’t _ , dude.”

“Wait, don’t tell me — ” Mat starts. For as long as he can remember, he’s had the uncanny knack of guess people’s favourite songs. He feels the familiar melody around them. When he starts singing  _ U Smile I Smile _ , Tito looks delighted. He’s that particular brand of happy that Mat recognizes, that he could point out in a room full of people, could identify from outer space — the one Mat knows as exquisitely Tito. 

“You’re amazing,” he says, and it’s so genuine, and if his words happen to coincide with the cresting bridge of the song, then that’s for Mat alone.

And, if Mat’s being completely honest, his half-crush on Tito is hardly  _ news _ . Mat’s known him for over half a decade, for better or for worse, which is a quarter of his lifetime, which amounts to over two thousand days, and Mat is almost certain something has always been there.

 

***

 

On Thursday, Mat nearly takes a puck to the head because Phil Collins is quite possibly trying to use his body as a vessel for  _ Take Me Home  _ to project itself throughout MSG. Tito nudges his shoulder back on the bench just as the song cycles into its huge chorus, and Mat can barely focus on anything besides the points where their sides are pressed together, touching. 

 

***

 

It gets harder to ignore. That’s the problem.

The music starts whirring out of control, and honestly, it feels like a merry-go-round that’s going triple time with no signs of slowing down. The chords tumble around him, shaking him to the point of nausea. Most given moments, Mat worries he may be sick.

Mat knows that this is something he has to, like,  _ deal with _ , but there’s only so much he’s actually equipped to do in this world. He’s pretty sure the universe fashioning him with a personal Spotify playlist that flips and dives through a hundred different songs an hour, erratic and impatient, is not one of them. At most, he’s qualified to play hockey and send his friends dumb memes and, like, give his change to homeless people. He’s not ready for an existential crisis of this magnitude.

Instead, he spends more time with Tito. 

Tito is reliable. He always makes Mat laugh, even in the dumbest situations, and he’s got super nice arms. Tito also, like, makes Mat want to be a better person, more responsible, kinder to people. All that. On a really enormous level. The scale of Stuff Tito Does for Mat versus Stuff Mat Does for Tito is completely imbalanced, in that sense, because Mat hardly thinks he brings the same kind of joy to Tito’s life that Tito brings to his, but. Mat’s kind of a glutton for punishment, even if the punishment he endures for Tito’s sake is the feeling of being drawn in, like tides to the moon, and being constantly made aware of his own insignificance in its face. Tito generates a specific magnetism that Mat could never ignore, music or no music.

_ It’s centrifugal motion, it’s perpetual bliss _ , the music answers, chiming with a Faith Hill twang that Mat actively shoves out of the way.

The music has mostly been on good behaviour tonight, which Mat chalks up to being in the glow of Tito’s presence. They’ve spent the night dicking around, half-playing Chel, half-trying to ambush the other in a popcorn-throwing attack. It’s the kind of night Mat could live over and over, because the electricity between them is easy, cushioned, and he doesn’t have to hyper-analyze his feelings when Tito is trying to dump a handful of buttery kernels down the front of his sweater. So it’s unexpected, sudden, when Mat feels the music. It bubbles up to the top of his lungs, screeches in his eardrums, and permeating all his senses. Dizzying and distracting.

There’s a kick drum beating in Mat’s chest, but nobody else can hear it.

There’s a string quartet curling the hair at the nape of his neck, but nobody else can see it.

There’s a chorus, desperate and surging, pushing its way through Mat’s veins, but nobody else can feel it. 

There’s Tito, lying on his side with his face illuminated by his phone. He’s scrolling aimlessly, Mat can tell by the blank look on his face and the speed of his thumb. Mat throws a cushion at him, because he doesn’t want to think about the music howling in his soul right now. Tito scoffs when the cushion knocks the phone out of his hands. 

Mat smirks.

Tito pushes up the bridge of his glasses and looks at Mat expectantly. “Can I help you?” he asks.

Mat shrugs. “I’m bored,” he answers, which isn’t quite true. The real word is  _ restless _ , but it amounts to the same thing.

“You wanna do something?”

Mat doesn’t say,  _ always, with you _ , but only because he hasn’t quite worked that part out fully in his mind. He just nods and stands up purposefully. Tito follows his action, and grabs his car keys off the coffee table in front of him.

“We could go for a drive?” he suggests.

Mat grins. “I’m down.”

Tito drives a Jetta, which is modest and hilarious and adorable, and which all the guys chirp him for. Tito doesn’t care much what they say, because he insists it’s good on gas and, what —  _ is he going to ruin the environment with another SUV when he’s only driving himself to and from a hockey rink 9 times out of of 10 _ ?

Mat, lamely enough, thinks it’s kind of noble of him, anyway. 

Tito tosses him the AUX once Mat’s buckled in.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Mat says, sarcastic but still delighted, because as much as the music inside him makes him itch sometimes, he’s come to find there’s nothing better than the music that blasts through the speakers, on a drive around the quiet streets of Long Island with his best friend.

Tito swats at him, pulling out of the parking garage and down the street. “I can handle it. Just put something on.”

Mat likes big sounds and street lights and the way Tito focuses on the road so intently, even with a smile playing at his lips from something dumb Mat will inevitably say. He plays M83 first, and settles in, stealing only the occasional sidelong glance at his driver.

“Where do you wanna go?” Tito asks.

They settle for driving aimlessly for a while before stopping at a small soft ice cream shack, miraculously still open despite the harsh, cold weather. They eat their soft serve still seated in Tito’s car, with the volume on The National turned down to barely a whisper. Mat still feels it thrumming, though, he can hear it dancing across his chest. 

Tito nods at something in the distance. “Have you ever been there?”

Mat follows his line of sight and lands on the roller rink Tito’s staring at. “No, have you?”

Tito shakes his head. “We should go sometime, though,”

It sounds an awful lot like planning a date, Mat thinks. But then again, it probably doesn’t, since they’re friends, despite all the confusion and half-acknowledged feelings that blur those lines sometimes. 

“Yeah, let’s do it,” he answers, and Tito smiles. And then, because Mat can’t help it, “I’d kick your ass, though.”

Tito erupts into a fit of laughter, and as he laughs, Mat thinks cadence and harmony and the air-light, star-bright feeling rising in his chest. “You’re on,”

Mat considers how it’s going to take a lot when he fully comes to terms with what he’s feeling. In any case, Mat falls asleep still feeling the music, and at night, he dreams in technicolour.  
  


***

 

Even after weeks, the music shows no signs of slowing down. It’s pounding and urgent, insistent, an overflowing tub threatening to spill over and Mat — he can’t hold onto it all. He tries everything. Filling his mind with so many distractions he can barely keep up, ridding himself of everything through gruelling yoga sessions. The music always creeps back into the foreground, makes itself known. Mat yearns for the old days, when all he had was noise and goals and not nearly enough time to think about how something that’s as much a part of him as his heart, his lungs, his muscles, is threatening to undo him entirely. He’s damn near going out of his mind. The music thuds in his ears, unforgiving, relentless, so Mat keeps his head down and ignores the concerned looks he gets from Tito and Ebs and anyone else who bothers keeping tabs on him.

More often than not, Mat considers knocking his head against a cement wall.

 

*

 

And then, as if the universe were reading his mind, Tito gets sent down and everything goes quiet. Eerily quiet. It’s not like they stop talking. They still FaceTime, probably more often than two people living in the same city ought to, honestly. More than anything, Mat’s confused as hell. When he sees Tito’s big dumb face on his phone screen, his stomach still churns a mile a minute, but it’s like the universe is actively choosing to stay quiet. Mat never thought he’d miss the incessancy of the music, but it’s strange — Tito and the music leaving him in the same week. Hockey’s a good distraction, since he’s actually good at hockey, and he’s been producing  _ a lot _ lately. But it’s somehow not enough to keep Mat from feeling the gaping hole in his life left by Tito and the music's absence.

“You’ll be back in no time,” Mat says, one night, and he’s not sure whose nerves he’s more trying to assuage - Tito’s or his own.

“You say that like I can keep up with you,” Tito answers. He’s not defeated, never defeated, but Mat will never understand or accept his constant self-deprecation.

Then Mat feels something low in his stomach not unlike sorrow, and he doubts it’s an accident.

 

***

 

Mat knows he sticks out like a sore thumb. 

It’s suspicious for Mat to keep to himself all night, despite the celebratory mood and getting three points tonight. But since Tito’s been in Bridgewater, Mat’s hardly felt like celebrating much of anything. And the music is back to its usual antics, swirling out of control, dizzying, as though to match the pace of Mat’s frustration.

Jordan Eberle never struck Mat as the meddling kind, so Mat’s surprised to see him pull up a chair, when Mat’s in the middle of contemplating what the Gin Blossoms have to do with his current situation.

“Okay, what’s going on?” Ebs asks, and the melodic 90s strumming slows.

“Nothing.”

The look on Ebs’ face is enough of an indication that he doesn’t believe Mat.

Mat sighs. “It’s a  _ long _ story,”

Ebs leans back in his chair. “I’ve got time,”

Mat rolls his eyes and gestures around him. “There’s…this music. And it’s been  _ pissing me the hell off lately _ ,” he says with a bite to his voice, hopeful that the music picks up on it. He used to not think the music was sentient, but the last few weeks have proved him utterly, hopelessly wrong. “I don’t think it’s ever going to stop, and I don’t know how to get it to leave me alone.”

Ebs just shakes his head. “Fucking rookies, man,” he says, mostly to himself. “Everybody’s got something. Me? I get a stomach ache whenever I eat spaghetti. And it sucks, because spaghetti’s, like, everyone’s favourite pre-game meal, right?”

Mat blinks slowly. He’s not following at all. “Where are you going with this, dude?”

“Hear me out. Spaghetti used to  _ not _ give me a stomach ache, but then I started eating more of it and it got really bad. So I figured the spaghetti was  _ telling me something _ .”

Mat narrows his gaze. “That… you’re allergic to spaghetti?” He guesses.

“Gluten,” Ebs corrects, “but yeah, exactly.  _ So _ …”

“I don’t know what spaghetti has to do with my situation, if I’m being honest — ”

Ebs rolls his eyes. “Come on kid, use your brain. The spaghetti is the music.”

Mat scrapes his brain to identify some semblance of meaning in Ebs’ words. “The music is trying to tell me I’m allergic to gluten?” he says, and he’s half-joking, but Ebs bangs his head against the table anyway.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Excuse me?”

“When the universe tells us things, we should listen,” Ebs says, like it’s obvious. “The music is telling you  _ something _ . It’s a sign.”

“I — ”

“When do you hear the music most?”

Mat pauses. He feels gears turning but he’s not sure he wants to know what they’re about to spell out. There’s only one thing Ebs is about to say, Mat knows, and that’s gotta be — 

“With Tito,” and if the music actually swells when Mat speaks Tito’s name into the universe, into the space of air around them, then that can stay between him and the music.

“Yup,”

“Oh,”

For the first time in the past ten minutes, Ebs cracks a smile. “I guess that’s it, then.” 

“Please don’t tell me you were  _ actually _ trying to compare the universe telling me that Tito is special to your stomach telling you not to eat gluten?”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

With that, Ebs pats his shoulder for good measure and gets up to grab them another round. Mat has a million questions, because if they’re going by Ebs’ metaphor, then that means the music wants Mat to stay away from Tito. Which isn’t ideal, for a number of reasons starting with the fact that they’re best friends and ending with the fact that they play on a line together. Mat’s confused feelings notwithstanding.

Maybe Ebs is right, Mat thinks. Ebs  _ is _ , like, considerably older than him. He’s probably only slightly more worldly, to be honest, but Mat could buy that he’s got secret wisdom on stuff like this. He definitely needs to work on his analogies, though, if he’s gonna be going around sprouting wisdom to helpless rookies like Mat.

 

***

 

Mat tries not to absolutely lose his shit when Tito gets called back up. It’s harder than he expects.

Especially when they get put on a line together with Ebs.

Ebs keeps nudging into him, saying stuff like, “You got your boy back,”

And Mat keeps purposely ignoring him.

But it’s hard, because they play well.  _ Together _ . The kind of shit people only dream about, let alone get to do alongside their best friend. There’s a level of intuition on the ice Mat never thought was possible, and the line of them and Ebs is just solid gold. Their passes connect, and Mat feels the staccato rhythm they create on the ice in his  _ bones _ , and the feeling is sweet — so sweet — when one of their passes bounces off the others’ stick and into the net.

Tonight, they’re on fire. They’re playing in a way that’s gonna get them a feature on NHL.com tomorrow, probably, for being a duo to look out for. Mat’s always focused on winning, but tonight, all he can think about is how well they’re playing. They’ve each got a pair of points and there’s electricity in the fucking air, and Mat tastes it on his tongue. The music wraps itself around them in the celly, finally back and brassier than ever. Mat can’t immediately tell it apart from the goal music blaring through Barclay’s, but he knows it’s there. He hopes Tito can feel it, too.

When they file into the locker room, the energy is unbelievable. It was a good win — the kind they haven’t had in a long time, and everyone’s spirits seem visibly lighter than they did earlier. Mat’s happy, too. 

“Think we make a good team?” Tito asks, leaning against Mat’s locker. The hesitation from before is gone, too, which is good. Mat can’t help the swooping in his stomach, low and warm.

“ _ Pas pire _ ,” he answers, and the French elicits an impossibly wide smile from Tito. 

They stay like that, grinning wordlessly at each other, until Mat feels a sting in his eardrum, a sharp hum that reverberates throughout his whole body and shakes him from his stupor. 

In the spirit of his heart-to-heart with Ebs, Mat’s been trying to listen to what the music has to say. He’s usually so caught up in a moment, either actively trying to pay the music no heed or to live his life in spite of its constant loop. But the music is frantic, now. Mat thinks it sounds like the score from an animated movie — like, where the bee is struggling to fly back to its hive or something. Not that this is in any way comparable to the fucking Bee Movie, Jesus. More like that classical piece —  _ Flight of the Bumblebee _ ? That one. And sure, he’d totally buy Tito as the main character of a Pixar short — with his huge, kind eyes and his perpetually pouty lips and — yeah, all that. But that’s not the point, here. The point is, his whole body is urging him to take a step closer and he doesn’t know why, but all of a sudden, he can’t look Tito in the eyes.

“Are you okay, man?” 

And Mat wants to say,  _ for the love of god, no _ , but he just shakes his head in a half-nod that doesn’t really mean yes or no. Mat thinks about what Ebs said, about Tito being  _ his boy _ and about listening to the universe’s cues. It’s been entirely impossible to get the music to leave him alone, and for all that Ebs’ metaphor kind of sucks, if he’s even remotely right, then that means —

The music was guiding him along this whole time, and as much as Mat can logically understand it, he can’t comprehend it. Can’t fathom why the music would help him all of a sudden, when it’s sat by him his whole life without so much as a note out of place. As if in response, Mat feels his heart glow with lyrical, beautiful sound.

 

***

 

Mat doesn’t get nervous, on principle. He understands the feeling of being amped up when something is really important, like a draft, but he doesn’t count that as nerves. It’s more of a particular kind of hype that makes it hard to breathe, but only because you know it’ll settle eventually. Same thing goes with people. They’re either going to like him or not like him, and he makes it a point to make it hard for people to not like him, so. Why bother being nervous about that? Nobody’s made him this nervous in a  _ long _ time, is the point. Especially  _ Tito _ , of all people. They’re best friends, road roomies. More than that, they’ve known each other since they were fourteen and pimply with dreams so big they could hardly hold them all. Why would he get nervous around a kid who should have been too small to play hockey?

But, the thing is, Tito makes him nervous. Because even if the universe wants Mat to realize he loves Tito, there’s no possible universe in which Tito actually loves him back. There just can’t be. Mat’s a literal idiot who needed  _ Jordan Eberle _ to point out what the music was onto.  _ Ebs _ . When Mat should have seen it coming from a mile away. (Nothing against Ebs, really, of course, just — )

Tito is twenty thousand leagues past Mat, and Mat hardly thinks he can measure up, even with  _ Time After Time _ threatening to burst out his soul at the mere thought of him. But he can’t take the anticipation anymore. And despite his brain warring with his soul, with the atoms of music that compose his very being, Mat waits for the locker room to empty out, hoping to catch Tito alone.

“Would you…want to hang out tomorrow?” Mat asks, and he cringes at how casual he sounds. So he clears his throat and clarifies by adding, “Like… a date.”

“Like a date,” Tito repeats, ostensibly to himself. There are what feels like a million seconds of dead silence, where the music just  _ halts _ , like it knows Mat’s waiting on bated breath for a response. When it finally comes, when Tito finally says  _ yes _ with a slow smile, it’s back like it never left. Brassy and full, like running so fast your body charges ahead of your legs and you’re just about to lose your footing but —

“Yes?” Mat asks, and he chews on his lower lip to keep himself from smiling like the huge fucking idiot with dangerous heart palpitations he knows Tito makes him. 

Tito rolls his eyes, but he’s still smiling, not bothering to hide it. “Yes, Mathew.”

The sense of relief that instantly floods him almost knocks him off his feet. The music pokes him in the ribs, as if to say  _ I told you so _ . His legs almost give out beneath him because, rather than intensify or stop, the music... settles. And Mat feels it down to his marrow, the rhythm returning to a steady, sure pace. It reminds him of the time Tito jumped up from his couch to start doing the  _ Baby _ choreography by heart and Mat felt like his chest was going to explode right then and there. It was the kind of moment that felt too good for Mat, and he recognized how precious it was, even as it unfolded in front of him. Mat hardly knew it at the time, but he feels with certainty that he’ll be chasing down that feeling for years to come. 

Tito looks at him shyly and Mat abandons all sense and just throws his arms around his neck. Startled, Tito falls back a step, but his arms wind around Mat’s waist in response. And he’s laughing, always laughing.

“Took you long enough,” he says, his voice indulgent, and Mat thinks he is quite possibly in love with him.

 

***

 

Mat’s wanted to sweep Tito off his feet for as long as he can remember; he just hasn’t been able to fully articulate that until recently. So Mat does the only thing he really is capable of doing when he feels freed from an intangible boundary — he acts dramatically to overcompensate for feeling like he missed out. In this case, he uses a pretty significant chunk of his entry-level paycheck to rent out the only roller rink on this side of Long Island. The one they gazed out at while eating soft serve that was too cold to be anything other than indulgent that night.

He taps his thighs, while he waits on a graffitied bench outside. The rhythm is blank at first, but then it starts to take the shape of Toto’s  _ Africa _ . It’s not the worst outcome, if he’s being honest, and also, Tito and Toto are one letter apart, so. Before he can change his mind about the whole thing, Mat goes inside. He spends ten minutes fiddling with the light settings, trying to get the disco ball to spin at an appropriate pace, and then another ten minutes meticulously lacing up his roller skates, and he’s in the middle of putting a CD into the player — because this place hasn’t been converted to AUX cords, apparently — when Tito shows up.

Mat thinks,  _ this is it _ . It’s a stepping off point, walking a plank, retracing your steps incrementally with breadcrumbs in the form of songs and lyrics and musical inflections. All that’s left is the rest of this evening, the rest of his life. Mat settles a little, though, his heart like an 808 drum, rattling incessantly in his ribcage. Because, after all, there is no possible universe in which Mat doesn’t love Tito with all his heart.

“Barzy,” Tito says, and his lips are so, so, stupidly pouted that Mat needs a moment to compose himself.

“Surprise?” Mat says, weakly. A moment later, he pitches forward on his roller skates, momentarily — though perhaps eternally — disarmed by how cute Tito looks, with the neons in the lighting and the flash of the disco ball playing beautiful melodies on his face. He doesn’t even try to collect himself, because Tito’s doubled over laughing. Somehow, he can be fully bent over and yet totally composed on his skates, which Mat doesn’t think is fair — that Tito gets to be the smooth one — when they both play a profession that requires them to be, like, mobile on skates as a rule.

“This is so stupid,” he says, grabbing onto the boards to hold himself steady.

“It’s really not,” Tito laughs again, and Mat just, like, wants a flash mob to break out into  _ 99 Luftballons _ to match the bubbling in his stomach. 

Mat thinks as he loses himself in the bow of Tito’s lips, feels the swell around them,  _ Well, if I never hear another song again, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad _ .

“I’m sorry it took me this long,” 

“I’m glad you got there, though,”

“Me too,” Mat admits,  “the music wouldn’t leave me alone.”

Mat doesn’t get a chance to clarify, or to ask Tito if he understands, because suddenly Tito grabs his hand, tugging him down the wooden planks of the roller rink. There’s something eerie and sad about an empty roller rink at night, even if it’s empty by design. The good kind of eerie, though, like documentaries about the deep sea, like the practice rink late at night, like music following you wherever you go. The eeriness doesn’t last long, because the speakers start churning out 80s ballads that match the rate of the music in Mat’s soul, and Tito still hasn’t let go of his hand.

“So, the music has been around for a while, but it was always in the background,” Mat explains, and he does possibly the most pathetic twirl ever witnessed in a roller rink, hoping to distract from the obvious speech-level of explanation he has to give Tito. “Lately, though, it got worse. Like, a lot worse. I couldn’t leave my house without hearing a hundred different songs and melodies and lyrics. And trust, I tried headphones and earplugs. Nothing worked.”

Tito, bless him, follows along patiently. Every so often, Mat will stumble, and Tito’s always there to hold out his hand and catch him.

“But, I figured it out — ” Mat feels a jab in his ribs like a snare drum. “well, the music helped me figure it out.”

“Okay…”

“It was getting so… distracting because it had a purpose.”

“And what was the purpose?” Tito asks.

“You,” Mat answers, simple and honest, and not nearly as scary as Mat expected.

Tito blinks. “So the music got you to ask me out?” he asks, and when he smiles, it’s like the swell of a symphony. It’s sweeping and orchestral, and it knocks the air clean out of Mat’s lungs.

Suddenly, everything is like an 80s movie. Soft neons and pale moonlight and the dip of Tito’s throat. Like there’s the gentlest filter cast over the whole evening, and Mat’s never understood people who say they feel their heart beating in their chest, but now his is hammering desperately against his ribcage and he’s tracking its every move. Mat hears synth music in the back of his mind, lets himself get swept away. Tito’s got Bette Davis eyes.

“Something like that,” Mat answers, and he’s breathless, all of a sudden. He doesn’t think he could fake it at this point, even if he wanted to.

(Which he doesn’t, for the record — )

Instead, he feels the music bounce in his heels, wind its way up his calves, and push his feet forward so he’s standing directly in front of Tito, for the first time all night.

“Long story short, I think I love you,” he says, halting to a stop, “more or less.” His hands land low on Tito’s hips, and Tito pushes into the touch. “How’s it going?” he asks with a grin. He’s way past the point of nonchalance. 

“Pretty good,” Tito answers, and he looks equally fond. His dumb perfect mouth is doing that thing where he smiles too hard and bares all his teeth. Where his bottom lip sticks out, pink as all hell and Mat is just so gone, it’s ridiculous. “So, is that more, or is it less?

Mat tugs Tito in, fingers in his belt loops, and kisses him squarely. The moment their lips meet, Mat  _ feels _ rather than hears the music stop. The entire world seems to halt for them, the stars and moons and planets aligning, like this is what the universe wanted for them, after all. And Mat, for the life of him, doesn’t know  _ how _ they’ve never done this before.

“I’d say more. Definitely more.”

Mat loses track of how long they skate around, how many laps they take, how many sidelong glances he casts at Tito to verify that this is, in fact, happening. The music is caught in his eyelashes, at his fingertips, every tactical place they are linked, and Mat’s lucky, he thinks, that he’s got the music to remind him of every beautiful, stolen moment he’s had because of Tito.

Mat never considered what it would be like for something to make a space for itself in his heart, to burrow itself deep and lay, dormant and nestled, waiting for something to draw it out. Waiting for the music to pull it out and expose it, laying it bare for Mat to see. Mat thinks he owes the music this one. It’s been waiting for this, Mat thinks. And that means something more than his momentary lapse in sanity, his fragmented brain, driven up the wall. He realizes he’d endure that, and much more, for Tito. For nearly seven years, for winning together, losing together, for sneaking out and searching for something bigger than them. For all those moments of silence that Tito filled with his too-big laugh, that Mat smiled along to quietly. For all those soft melodies the universe lent Mat to accompany them.

For this moment, right here, with nothing between him and Tito but fragments of light reflected off the gleaming disco ball.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Me: *Is on a constant quest to out-ridiculous my previous fics*
> 
> Also, to my knowledge, Jordan Eberle is not gluten-intolerant.
> 
> Songs mentioned/listened to on repeat while writing:  
> \- Time After Time by Cindy Lauper  
> \- Take Me Home by Phil Collins  
> \- This Kiss by Faith Hill  
> \- 99 Luftballons by Nena  
> \- The Gin Blossoms, like, entire discography  
> \- Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes  
> \- Come to My Window by Melissa Etheridge  
> \- 1950 by King Princess
> 
> And many more. I'm definitely missing some because I made a whole playlist but I'm too lazy to go back and check it!
> 
> Also, [writing blog](https://oldjolt.tumblr.com).


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